Ominous Development

In 1982 Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean regime began letting thousands of Chileans exiled when he took power 10 years earlier come back home. Before Pope John Paul’s April visit, Pinochet promised a rapid review of all 3,500 people still on the exile list. It is now down to 520 names.

Ariel Dorfman is not one of them. Dorfman, a Chilean writer with a worldwide audience, was exiled in 1973, but began traveling to Chile again in 1983 from his current home at Duke University in North Carolina. A week ago, with a recently renewed Chilean passport, he stepped off a plane to Santiago and was told that a heretofore secret decree of Oct. 6, 1986, barred him from returning.

“This is an ominous development,” Dorfman said from Buenos Aires. “It makes all exiles parolees; it means the Chilean government tries to control what they say and do in other countries, and puts foreign publications who publish what they write within reach of Chile’s arm.” Dorfman has written critically of Chile’s repression in many publications, including The Times.

Exile, one of the cruelest punishments, is profoundly offensive to Chileans, including many who support Pinochet. That for the first time since 1982 a former exile has been denied reentry mocks Pinochet’s promise of a gradual return to democracy for Chile.